Maureen will be remembered not only as an outstanding leader in the field of bone biology but also as a wonderful friend selleck and colleague to all who knew her. Maureen was born in the small village

of Benburb, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland as the middle child of five children of Robert and Elizabeth Howard who were teachers at the local village schools. Education was of paramount importance and she was awarded a scholarship to attend Methody School in Belfast. She excelled in Physics and was offered a bursary to study at Queen’s University, Belfast where she gained a first class B.Sc. Hons degree in Experimental Physics in 1948. Following a year at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, she moved to the University of Oxford, became a member of St Hugh’s College, met her

husband John and spent the rest of her career. She gained her DPhil degree in 1952 in Nuclear Physics at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford for research on “The Talazoparib mw investigation of nuclear reactions using photographic plate technique. Maureen’s earliest research papers dealt with Nuclear Physics and radiation measurement. Included was the determination of the efficiency of production of neutrons by deuterium–deuterium (D–D) interaction whilst studying for her D.Phil degree at the Clarendon laboratory, which was headed by Frederick Alexander Lindemann, Lord Cherwell, F.R.S. This background 3-oxoacyl-(acyl-carrier-protein) reductase in Nuclear Physics and investigations on the D–D reaction by using nuclear track emulsions to record the energy and angular distribution of 3Helium and 3H nuclei and thus neutron flux served her well in her later and prominent work on autoradiographic detection of radioisotopes in biological materials. After gaining

her higher degree, Maureen moved to the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research. This University of Oxford department had been established by Sir William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, in the Radcliffe Observatory, now part of Green Templeton College. Maureen always retained fond memories of her short time there in this exquisite central location in Oxford. The buildings had been purchased from the Radcliffe Trustees in 1934 following the erection of a new observatory in Pretoria, South Africa. It was an idyllic place to work as the old Observatory was a beautiful building that had been constructed in “a calm and retired locality” and has been described as the finest Georgian building in Oxford. Its construction as an observatory was completed in 1794 to the designs of James Wyatt, based on a small Tower of the Winds in Athens from the benefaction of Dr John Radcliffe. Geoffrey Dawes, a foetal physiologist, had become the director of the Nuffield Institute for Medical Research in Oxford in 1948 and provided a small room for use of microradiographic equipment by Dame Janet Vaughan’s staff; he and Maureen remained firm friends throughout her time in Oxford.